Canada to overhaul copyright laws for digital age

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians will be allowed to copy
legally acquired music to their iPods and computers but would
be banned from getting around any digital locks that companies
might apply, under new legislation introduced in Parliament on
Thursday.

The bill, introduced by Industry Minister Jim Prentice,
would continue to exempt Internet service providers from
liability for copyright violations by their subscribers,
requiring them only to pass on notices of violations rather
than to take down offending material as required in the United
States.

It would also allow consumers to record television and
radio programs for playing back at a later time, a practice
known as time-shifting, but would prohibit people from keeping
them indefinitely in a personal library of recordings.

In drafting the new legislation, the government said it
faced the delicate task of balancing the rights of content
creators with the realities and needs of everyday life in a
digital world, and also realizing the difficulty of policing
possible personal infringements.

Prentice said of the issue: "It touches each and every one
of us, and it is no surprise to find so many different points
of view with respect to copyright."

One online group, Fair Copyright for Canada, was set up on
Facebook in advance of the new bill to protest against the
government's copyright plans and has 40,000 members.

Its creator, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist,
focused on provisions under which it would be illegal to break
digital locks.

"Prentice hands consumers a series of attention-grabbing
new 'private rights' but then proceeds to take them away in the
digital environment," he wrote. "All these rights force
consumers to read the fine print -- you can shift a song or a
television show, but once it's locked down, your rights
disappear and your potential liability skyrockets."
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